


Piece Of Me

by icewhisper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coldwave Fic Exchange, Gen, M/M, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 11:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Mick’s earliest memory was with Bast. She was just a bouncing golden retriever puppy then, tripping over her own paws, but she yipped happily and scrambled back to her feet. She ran around his parents’ daemons and barreled straight into his chest, wet tongue on his face. He laughed, tiny arms wrapped around her and feeling like he was home. She was his and she was him.Leonard’s earliest memory involved him in his mother’s lap, head pillowed on her breast while Hamutal—then, only a tiny lady bug—crawled over his hand. His mother buried her fingers in his hair, voice low as she sang to him, and her blue jay, Abiola, accompanied her. Safety. Contentment.





	Piece Of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daughter of Scotland (Caliena)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Daughter+of+Scotland+%28Caliena%29).



> Written as part of the Coldwave Fic Exchange for daughterofscotland who asked for: _Daemon AU or Coldwave living in Germany_. I went along with the daemon AU. The meanings of their daemon’s names can be found here: [Bast](http://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/Bast/) and [Hamutal](http://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/Hamutal/).

Mick’s earliest memory was with Bast. She was just a bouncing golden retriever puppy then, tripping over her own paws, but she yipped happily and scrambled back to her feet. She ran around his parents’ daemons and barreled straight into his chest, wet tongue on his face. He laughed, tiny arms wrapped around her and feeling like he was home. She was his and she was him.

He didn’t speak until he was nearly four, but Bast spoke for him in yips and barks when she was a dog and little chirps when she decided it was time for wings.

His parents spent the first few years convinced that she’d settle as some kind of dog, hard-working and loyal, but he saw his first bon-fire grow out of control when he was ten and a distraction became an obsession. After that, her forms seemed to drift towards desert-types; cheetahs and jackals and zebras and the memorable time she became a wolf spider, scaring little Emma so much that she burst into tears. The African wild dog came when he was thirteen and just stuck for a while. She still shifted, playing around with her form and finding what felt right, but that one was her favorite. Most days, Mick thought it was his favorite too, with the strange patterns in her fur that looked like scorch marks.

“I wish you could become a phoenix,” he told her mournfully one day while they watched a fire die down to embers.

“I can try,” she offered, but they both knew she couldn’t. Daemons couldn’t shift into mythical creatures, no matter how cool it would be.

He settled for burying his face into her fur.

\---

Leonard’s earliest memory involved him in his mother’s lap, head pillowed on her breast while Hamutal—then, only a tiny lady bug—crawled over his hand. His mother buried her fingers in his hair, voice low as she sang to him, and her blue jay, Abiola, accompanied her. Safety. Contentment.

The song became a safe haven when his father left for prison and came home different. He’d been distant before and quick to anger, but he never raised his fists until the cops—his _friends_ —had taken him away. His mother said he’d broken the law, that he’d needed to pay for his crime.

Leo never understood why he and his mother had to pay as well, bruises blossoming on skin while their daemons cried. Hamutal—already comfortable in feline forms by the time he was six—shifted into a tabby instead of the intimidating lion Leo wished she could be. Never enough for his father’s rattlesnake, Mathis, with her sharp teeth that she loved to sink into Hamutal’s underbelly.

Safety. Contentment. Leo held onto memories of whispered songs and his mother’s arms until the cancer took her. He watched her and Abiola wither away to nothing, weaker and weaker until she gave a tired sigh and that was it. She was gone by the end of the breath and Abiola faded into the air like smoke.

Leo cried, face hidden in Hamutal’s fur, because he couldn’t bear to see his mother without Abiola by her side. It just meant she was really gone.

\---

“Did you know,” Mick said at the dinner table one night, “Bast’s name is Egyptian? Some people think it means heat.” He bounced a little higher in his seat. “Like _fire_.”

“That’s nice, sweetheart,” his mother told him, but the smile on her face seemed forced. “Eat your peas, okay?”

“Yes, Momma.”

Years later, he’d understand the look his parents exchanged as he shoved overcooked peas into his mouth. Fear.

\---

“Will you stay with me?” he asked Hamutal one day, the two of them hidden under his blanket.

She bumped her tiny black nose to his and curled into his chest. “Until our last breath,” she promised him. It was too morbid for either of them, both much too young, but they’d watched how long his mother’s daemon remained by her side. It was a memory they’d never shake.

“I need to protect Lisa,” he whispered, thinking about the tiny baby in the battered crib. His father already resented her and her mother had already disappeared on a diaper run she’d never return from.

“I’ll protect Gildas,” Hamutal swore.

He nodded and hugged her tighter.

\---

“What about a nice snow leopard?” his shrink suggested when he was thirteen and in juvie for the first time. “I bet she’d be beautiful.”

Mick wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like cold.”

Bast yipped beside him—an African wild dog again—but she didn’t speak. She never did when he was forced to actually talk to people. His mother had commented once that only one of them were ever verbal at a time, but Mick wasn’t sure he agreed. Bast liked talking to him. She understood that Mick got nervous with other people, that he shut down and needed her to talk for him.

She ducked under his hand the way she always did when his hand started twitching with the want for a lighter. He held onto her fur, tight.

“What about something domestic?”

“We like desert-types,” he said and looked at the clock. “Can I go now?”

His shrink sighed. “We can talk about this again on Friday.”

\---

The older he got, the more he seemed to avoid people. His father. His classmates. Hamutal hissed at anyone that came too close, back arched and tail straight. He glared at people until they went away.

Lisa was the only exception, but even she curled up against him less as she grew, too young for her world to be rocked with the knowledge that their father’s fists made her big brother too scared to let someone touch him. He gasped when people brushed against him, sharp and panicked, as shaken as he’d be if he brushed against someone else’s daemon.

Hamutal jumped into his arms or curled around his neck like a safety blanket. Lisa learned from them and Gildas began to favor handheld animals that meant Lisa had to carry him everywhere.

Guilt ate away at his insides and he wondered if he’d broken her as much as their father had.

\---

“Do you think we like fire too much?” Mick asked one day when his contraband lighter ran out of fluid and his mood seemed to plummet. The shrinks had been tossing around terms like pyromania with no small amount of horror and he’d tried to understand the fear, but he couldn’t. Fire was just… How could people be scared of something that glorious? It was as powerful as the god his parents prayed to.

Bast nudged his hand so he had to hold onto her instead of the empty lighter. “I don’t think other people like it enough,” she replied, but there was a sad whimper at the end. She understood. She always understood him and the burning in his soul. She felt it.

He sighed, heavy, and his fingers shook in her fur, but her presence calmed him as they sat in the back corner of the rec room. Too many people were milling around. Anxiety rose in his chest and he forced a slow exhale. “Let’s go back.”

She yipped softly and stood with him, pressed against his leg as they weaved through the groups. Neither one of them cared about the new shipment of fresh meat the bus had brought in. New kids. More people. Too many people. He knew in his gut he’d get a roommate finally as the center began to fill up. He’d been lucky the last few months that the buses came in more or less with equal amounts of kids that were getting sent home. Not now. He’d seen the crowd that spilled out of the rusted bus. Too many kids for him to keep his room to himself.

He hoped their daemon wasn’t big. Bast’s favored form was no bigger than an average house dog, a little larger than a _real_ African wild dog, but mirroring Mick and his early growth spurts. Still, the cells were small. Anything too big and everything would be too close for comfort.

He was halfway back when he heard a cat yowl. A human cry followed a second after, fists hitting flesh, and Mick’s brain said to keep walking. He didn’t want to deal with people and fights when he didn’t have a lighter to calm down with after.

Bast—his _soul_ —started growling, though, and he followed her instead.

He recognized Jake Klein and his gang in a blink. Their daemons were circling a skinny cat—malnourished and looking more like a stray than a daemon—while their humans beat on a kid. The kid—skinny shit that he was, just like his other half—was putting up a fight. Blood leaked from a cut on his eyebrow and his jaw was already turning an ugly shade of purple. He punched like he lived with his fists clenched, though, a scrapper if there ever was one, but there was no skill to it. He was fighting as blindly as the little cat was.

And they were losing.

He saw the sharpened end of the shiv and Bast dove into the fray in the next second. Teeth bared. Growling. She was as wild as the breed’s name implied. He mirrored it as he slammed his fist into Jake’s nose and smiled when he heard the cartilage break.

He lost himself in the fight, landing punches alongside the kid until he—fuck, the kid couldn’t be older than twelve—dropped to his knees and couldn’t get back up. He fought on his own after that, one against five, and kept going until he and Bast were the last ones standing.

His focus slid to the kid after, hands raised to help him up, but the kid skittered back. He let his hands drop. “Not gonna hurt you,” he said gruffly. “Just gonna help you down to the nurse.”

“I’m fine,” the kid muttered with what had to be the worst Central City slums accent Mick had ever heard. And he’d thought his Keystone accent was bad.

“You know where you’re going?” he asked, because he damn well knew the kid didn’t. “I’m just dropping you off. Your daemon looks pretty beat up too.”

Blue eyes went wide and he scrambled to his feet right before he crashed back down to his knees. “Hamutal!”

The cat whined, pathetic. Bast nudged her with her nose.

“You can’t walk down there,” he told the kid, “your ankle’s fucked.”

The kid glared at him, but Hamutal—just as stubborn as her human—tried to get to her feet. She made it about halfway and gasped out a soft _Lenny_ before Bast caught her. The kid—Lenny, Mick reminded himself—folded as quickly as his daemon did. “Fine.”

Lenny tensed up even worse when Mick slid an arm around his waist, hands twitching until he curled them back into fists. Bast picked up Hamutal by the scruff on the back of her neck, same way she did with his siblings’ daemons.

They left Lenny and Hamutal with the nurse, but somehow, Mick wasn’t surprised when the guards led a crutch-hopping Lenny to his room later.

“Meet your new roommate, Rory.”

Mick reached for his empty lighter.

\---

They didn’t talk much, but that did Len just fine. He didn’t need friends—wasn’t allowed them, anyway, and juvie probably wasn’t the place to be making them if he could—and it didn’t look like Mick was aching for one himself. They walked to classes together out of sheer convenience and sat together to do the homework they were forced to hand in.

He noticed a week in that Mick seemed to struggle with the reading, but he was smart. He understood the math and remembered the dates their history teacher spewed out. Words on a page seemed to make him stumble, though, and in a quiet _thank you_ for the save, Len started doing their reading aloud. Mick asked him about it once. He said Hamutal liked when he read to her.

They both pretended Mick didn’t jot down notes while he did it.

Mick slid him an extra pudding cup after they got a test back one day, cheeks flushed pink. “Hamutal doesn’t like being read to,” he muttered and Len felt himself smile, happy that Mick had seen through his lie. He was smarter than people gave him credit for. “You need it, anyway. You’re too skinny.”

It was vanilla—Len preferred chocolate—but he ate it anyway.

\---

“Your case worker said your grades are getting better,” his mother said during visitation one day. She beamed at him, proud, but he knew how much his juvie stints hurt her. It was his third time in there and it seemed to add lines to her face each time the judge sent him away.

He ducked his head. “Just English.”

“And history,” she added. “Brenda said you were asking her about dyslexia?”

“Len mentioned it,” he mumbled and ignored the quirk of a smile she did every time he mentioned his roommate. “I remember stuff. Words just look weird.”

“He’s been helping you with the reading?”

“He reads out loud.”

She hummed softly. “What did you say his daemon’s name was?”

“Hamutal,” he reminded her and cast Bast a fond smile. “She’s always some kind of cat, but Bast likes her anyway.”

Bast yipped beside him, front paws on Mick’s thighs.

Mick talked to his mother until the guards announced the end of visitation. His shoulders sagged. “Tell the kids I miss them?” he asked her.

“Of course, sweetie.” She wrapped him in her arms, hugging him tight. “Your father is going to come next week. He couldn’t get away from the farm today.”

“I know.” Because he did. Harvest season was creeping closer and closer. His father _needed_ to be at the farm and cover the chores Mick couldn’t do while he was locked up.

“You’ll be home soon,” she promised him. “Stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Yes, Momma.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek before he left, one hand buried in Bast’s fur and smiling. He still missed his family, but he’d be home in a few months. Lenny could probably break it down to days, hours, and minutes, but Mick was content with reminding himself that it was just another three. Three more months and he’d be back in his own bed.

“You think you’ll settle by the time we get home?” he asked as they walked, because he’d been wondering for a while. Bast still shifted over to a hyena now and again, but more often than not, she was firm as the African wild dog.

“Not ready yet,” she told him, though, and he nodded. He’d know when she did, like something inside them clicking into place. They’d know.

“What do you think Hamutal’s gonna be?”

“A cat?” Bast guessed, ever the smartass.

Mick barked out a laugh. “No shit,” he told her and flicked one of her ears. “She’s always some kinda cat.”

“Maybe the white one? They like that one,” his daemon suggested, but when they reached their room, Hamutal was curled up in Len’s lap as a black cat. That one was new. So was the fact that she hissed at them.

“Len?”

Len shook his head and held Hamutal tighter, but Mick saw the tremor in his hands. The worry in him ramped up a little more. Len was a smartass with a tongue sharp enough to cut glass and it had gotten him into a handful of fights since he’d been there—he still had a black eye coloring one side of his face after his last tussle with Victor Chen—but he wasn’t _quiet_. Even if he wasn’t outright speaking, his facial expressions said enough to fill a book. It had become some kind of game between them, communicating without words and seeing how long they could make it before they cracked.

This time, Len wouldn’t even look at him. His face was completely blank, eyes turned down towards the thin blanket, and Hamutal was _hissing_. She never hissed at them. She hated other people, but she liked them.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, as far back from them as he could, but it didn’t seem to calm Hamutal. She hissed again and moved like she was going to step off Len’s lap, but he tugged her in closer. “Lenny, what’s going on?”

Another head shake and Bast put her front paws on the bed, whining. “Hammy?” she tried, because she was the only one on the planet that could get away with calling Hamutal Hammy. Usually, it got her a friendly swat. This time, it got a pained noise out of the cat daemon.

She pressed forward in Len’s arms and nudged Bast’s head with her smaller one. Len let out a strangled noise of his own, but he let her slide out of his grip. Arms empty, he pulled his legs up to his chest instead and held them tight, but the shifting was enough for Mick to see the dampness on Len’s cheeks.

“Lenny, look at me,” he said as he shifted closer. In his peripheral, he saw Bast curl around Hamutal, tongue lapping at the cat’s head. “What the hell’s going on?”

Len lifted his head halfway, but it gave Mick a full view of red eyes and wet lashes. His gut churned. He’d never seen Len cry before. Even when he got his ass kicked, he had a stoicism to it, like it didn’t faze him. Like he was used to it.

Hamutal wriggled free from Bast and hopped up onto the bed, teeth pulling at Len’s sleeve until it pulled up enough to expose fresh bruises. Finger marks curled around Len’s thin wrist, already halfway to purple.

Mick’s stomach dropped. “Who the fuck…”

“Dad gets mad sometimes,” Hamutal admitted in a small voice, because Len had gone decidedly non-verbal.

“You didn’t go to visitation. The room-”

“He’s friends with a couple guards. They gave him one of the meeting rooms,” the daemon explained and licked Len’s hand. It was still shaking. “Lisa’s not learning how to pick locks fast enough.”

“She’s five,” Len croaked out, voice cracking, but Mick knew that. Len didn’t talk about his family much, but he’d mentioned his mom (dead) and his sister (annoying, but he loved her more than he loved himself).

He reached out and squeezed Len’s shoulder. The other boy tensed under his touch, but Mick still slid his hand up to cup the side of his head. “Lenny, look at me. Look.” His eyes were teary when he did and Mick resisted the urge to wipe the wetness off his cheeks. “What happened?”

“He said he was gonna teach Lisa lessons the way he teaches Lenny,” Hamutal told him as Bast hooked a paw over her, a low growl working its way up her throat. “He wants to see if she learns faster that way.”

“We’re supposed to protect her,” Len whispered. “Gildas-”

“-he’s too little,” Hamutal finished, black paw touching her human’s leg. “Mathis hurts him too.”

“You gotta tell someone. The cops or-”

“He _is_ a cop,” Len cut in with a hopeless shake of his head.

“You said he’d been in jail before.”

“It’s _Central_. Most of the cops have,” Len said. “Mick, if she gets hurt-”

Mick leant in closer, forehead pressed to Len’s. “She won’t,” he told him, but they both knew it was probably an empty promise. “I’ll burn him if I gotta.”

“You can’t.”

“I would.” Because he _would_ , he realized as his heart jumped in his chest. Len was important to him, weaseled his way onto the short list of people Mick actually _liked_. He cared about Len and he cared about Hamutal. Bast fucking adored them both and it wasn’t like he could pretend half of his soul was wrong.

“You’d go to prison— _real_ prison,” Len reminded him, but his eyes were wide, like he couldn’t wrap his head around the weight of what Mick was willing to do for him. He didn’t blame him. The realization still had Mick feeling shaky.

“I know,” he murmured and somehow, it felt like an okay compromise if it meant this guy couldn’t hurt Len and an innocent little girl anymore.

Len stared at him, eyes too blue and too watery. This time, Mick gave into the urge to wipe the tears away. His hand lingered on Len’s cheek after, thumb brushing against bruised skin, and he went to say something, but it got cut off by Len’s lips pressing to his.

It wasn’t earth shattering. It wasn’t romantic. He could taste salt when he pulled back and licked his lips. “Lenny-”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s fine,” he told him and reached up to hold Len’s head still. “Just…not now, okay?” Not now. Not when he was sixteen and Len was two years behind him. Mature as Len was, fourteen was still way too young and the juvie backdrop didn’t make it any better. A few years, maybe, if they were still in each other’s lives and still wanted to then, but right now, Len felt like a forbidden fruit Mick didn’t actually want to taste. Later, he told himself, because Len was pretty now, but he’d be prettier once he’d had time to grow up and actually look his age.

Len nodded like he understood and he was still tense under Mick’s hands—not because of the kiss, he told himself, because he was about as good with touch as cats were with water—but he didn’t pull away.

“You and me,” Mick told him softly as Bast gave a happy bark behind him.

“We’re pack animals,” she said proudly, even though she wasn’t settled. Either way, it made Len smile a little and Hamutal hopped down onto Bast’s back.

“What do you say, Len?”

Len let out a breath and nodded. “You and me.”

The End


End file.
